He is renowned for his significant contribution to making Norwegian literature accessible to an English-speaking audience, for which he was awarded the St. Olav's Medal in 1987 and the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit, Knight's Cross, First Class in 2004.
[3] James Wood praised the new translation as "superbly fresh", noting that ""If [Hamsun's] novels are not much read in English, it is probably less to do with his Nazism than with the difficulty of finding good translations",[4] and Tore Rem applauded that the "novel has finally found a worthy English form.
[6] Over the next decade Lyngstad subsequently translated the rest of Hamsun's major novels in the interest of restoring the works to their original artistic conception.
Lyngstad was made Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature upon his retirement to Port Jefferson, New York where he died on 2 May 2011.
He was survived by his wife, Eléonore M. Zimmermann, Professor Emerita of Stony Brook University, and his daughter, Karin H. Lyngstad Hughes.